In China, Rethinking the Grand Bargain ; Censorship and Pollution Drive Middle Class and Well-Off to Question Party

Article excerpt

The widening discontent was evident this month in the anti-
censorship street protests in Guangzhou and in the online outrage
that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the
north.

Barely two months into their jobs, the Communist Party's new
leaders are being confronted by the challenges posed by a
constituency that has generally been one of the party's most ardent
supporters: the middle-class and well-off Chinese who have benefited
from a three-decade economic boom.

A widening discontent was evident this month in the anti-
censorship street demonstrations in Guangzhou and in the online
outrage that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution
in the north. Anger has also reached a boil over fears concerning
hazardous tap water and a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic
chemical in Shanxi Province that has led to panic in nearby cities.

For years, many China observers have asserted that the party's
authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a
grand bargain: The party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange
the people do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose
lives improved under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal,
and in ways more vocal than ever. Their ranks include billionaires
and students, movie stars and homemakers.

Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the
system to provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are
demanding something that challenges the very nature of the party-
controlled state: transparency.

More and more Chinese say they distrust the Wizard-of-Oz-style of
control the Communist Party has exercised since it seized power in
1949, and they are asking their leaders to disseminate enough
information so they can judge whether officials, who are widely
believed to be corrupt, are doing their jobs properly. Without open
information and discussion, they say, citizens cannot tell whether
officials are delivering on basic needs.

"Chinese people want freedom of speech," said Xiao Qinshan, 46, a
man using a wheelchair at the Guangzhou protests.

The new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping, who took over as
general secretary of the party in November, is already feeling the
pressure of these calls. Mr. Xi has announced a campaign against
corruption, and propaganda officials, in a somewhat surprising move,
allowed the state news media to run in-depth reports on the air
pollution last week. Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at Beijing
Foreign Studies University, said he believed that the leaders had
decided "to face the problems."

Some Chinese say that they and their compatriots, especially
younger ones, are starting to realize that a secure life is
dependent on the defense of certain principles, perhaps most
crucially freedom of expression, and not just on the government's
meeting material needs. If a ruling party cannot police itself, then
people want outsiders, like independent journalists, to do so.

Proof of that can be seen in the wild popularity of microblogs in
which ordinary citizens frustrated by corruption post photographs of
officials who wear expensive wristwatches. It was evident, too, when
hundreds of ordinary people rallied in Guangzhou to defend Southern
Weekend, a newspaper known for investigative reporting, against
censorship.

"What's interesting is that these protests were not over a
practical issue but over a conceptual issue," Hung Huang, a news
media and fashion entrepreneur, said by telephone. "People are
beginning to understand these values are important to a better life,
and beginning to understand that unless we all accept the same
universal values, things will never really get better."

Ms. Hung also said, though, that most Chinese were "very
practical" and that their calls to action were "very, very far away"
from the kind of revolutionary fervor that had gripped the Arab
world.

The Guangzhou rallies were fueled by an outpouring of support on
the Internet for Southern Weekend, where journalists were protesting
recent censorship rules. …

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